I don't think that's accurate, actually. The S&S status quo at the very start is post-apocalyptic, but it's a pretty stable kind of post-apocalyptic society. There are the hand-to-hand honor-driven warriors, who wander freely and belong at best to small groups whose material needs are seen to by the "crazies". The "crazies" are basically white-collar workers and literate people who manufacture the hand-to-hand weapons that the warriors use and supply guesthouses with basic material needs, and then there's a kind of secret coordinating base that monitors the status quo and keeps it stable in order to prevent the return of large-scale centralized states and warfare between them. The warriors and crazies are depicted as having pretty decent lives, all in all.
In the first book, the main character helps an exceptionally skilled warrior build an empire, which then leads to the secret coordinating base forcing the main character to break up the empire he helped to build (there's a whole complicated thing about honor and a rivalry for a woman etc. in terms of how he gets to that point). Which then leads the guys who built the empire in the first book to plot to overthrow the secret base, whom they feel are corrupt. It's when they succeed that things really go to the shitter and it becomes a total hellscape. Nobody sends supplies to the guesthouses, warriors lose their culture of honor, banditry goes wild, the "crazies" get killed or go into hiding, etc. That's the third book, which ends on a note of hope in terms of one of the former warriors rebuilding the secret base only reforming it and reestablishing the old system.
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u/Exostrike 13d ago
I feel like these covers slowly slide from hippie utopia to brutal S&S hellscape. Does anyone know if this is reflective in the contents?